As part of the NASA-funded Killer Asteroid Project, the AHS physics students are joining those from about 70 other high schools and colleges from around the world in analysing images captured by the large, homemade telescope at Robert Holmes' Astronomical Research Institute in rural Charleston.
In the depressing 1998 film "Deep Impact," Elijah Wood's high school-age, amateur astronomer character spots a large, rogue comet destined to strike the Earth and wipe out all life. While this scenario thankfully is still just a work of fiction, life is still imitating art to some degree at Arcola High School, where students are working with a professional astronomer from Charleston on a project intended to help scientists spot asteroids on a collision course with our planet.